Good Ideas

I just read Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From at the recommendation of Cal Newport. It was a good read as far as this brand of pop science, work studies, intellectual history goes. I read it on the beach this past week and marveled at Johnson's ability to thread various historical narratives from Darwin to YouTube together in a coherent manner.

One basic argument that Johnson develops is that good ideas are more easily generated in environments where humans are interconnected in extensive networks rather than in environments where humans are isolated, working alone. Thus, urban locales tend to see the birth and growth of more good ideas than rural or isolated locales. The working example he chooses is a live coral reef. Ideas seldom come in a flash of lightning or some other single moment. They're more often cultivated over long periods of time and constructed out of a variety of materials and ideas culled from diverse sources.

He sums up his findings on where good ideas come from by offering a list of healthy and productive strategies for developing good ideas:

"Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent. Build a tangled bank."